At Night We Walk in Circles

11

THERE WAS A MOMENT, sometime in the third hour of my second interview with Mónica, when I found myself with one of the family’s photo albums spread across my lap. This shouldn’t have been unexpected, I suppose — in word and gesture I’d made it clear this was precisely the sort of access I was hoping for — and yet somehow it was. Already I knew more about Nelson than I did about many of the people I’d grown up with, including dear friends, including even family members. I was coming close to deciphering some of the mystery around our one brief encounter, but there was something else too. It wasn’t so much what I’d learned, as how I’d learned it: Nelson’s secrets revealed to me by his confidantes, his lovers, his classmates, people who’d seen fit to trust me, as if by sharing their various recollections, we could together accomplish something on his behalf. Re-create him. Reanimate him. Bring him back into the world. Piece by piece, I was gathering a sense of the richness of his inner life, and his imagination. I’d followed, at least partially, the trajectory Diciembre had taken a half a year before. I’d been to the same places, seen the same landscapes, talked to many of the same people. I’d tried to see things through Nelson’s eyes, using his journals to guide me whenever possible. On good days, I felt I was succeeding.

Now it was January 2002. I sat on the sofa of Nelson’s childhood home with his mother, listening to her stories of this shy, sensitive boy whom she’d raised into a man. She cried a little, apologized, then cried some more.

And I was turning the pages of this photo album, under Mónica’s watchful eye, when I came across a picture of Nelson and Francisco, circa 1983, posing before the monkey pen at the zoo. Neither Mónica nor Sebastián are in the frame, the brothers stand alone in the foreground. Francisco looks bored, antsy, but Nelson is a guileless five-year-old, absolutely charmed by what he sees. His smile is goofy, his brown eyes wide. He has one arm around his brother’s waist, and another pointing back over his shoulder, toward the animals.

“Look at him,” Mónica said, and I squinted at this picture, at Nelson’s smiling face. I compared this image with others I’d seen, with my own fragmented recollection of our one encounter, at the beginning of July the previous year; and suddenly, I had the strangest sensation, like double vision. For just an instant, I thought I saw myself standing just to the side of Francisco and Nelson, with another family — mine — and another set of siblings — my two sisters. An unlikely, but not impossible, coincidence. I stared at the image.

I also grew up in this city.

I was also once a brown-haired boy with thin legs and a bony chest.

I also went to the zoo. We all did.

It wasn’t me hovering in the background of that old photograph, of course, but that’s not the point. It could’ve been.

FOR A VARIETY OF REASONS I’ve decided not to include the name of this town. I’ll call it T—. I was born there, after all, and though I left when I was only three, I suppose this fact gives me some right to call it whatever I please. My parents brought my sisters and me to the city when I was very young, and I’m grateful that they did. I have no memories of our life before the move, though we children were regularly subjected to my father’s long monologues on the town and its lore, so it always hovered before us, an idyllic mountain dreamscape, its perfection taunting us from afar. My father only wanted us to feel connected to the place, a sentiment I understand and appreciate now that I’m older, but at the time, those notions felt imposed, like a state religion. In my memory, these speeches are always interrupted by a car alarm or a power outage or the neighbor’s overloud television set. Once in a great while the three of us children were packed onto a bus and forced to visit. We dreaded these trips, or pretended to, in order to spite our parents. We stared at our books, and refused to be impressed by the scenery. When the war closed off travel to the provinces, part of me felt relief. By the time the shooting stopped, there was no reason to travel anymore: nearly everyone my parents knew and loved had left the old town, and come to the city to start over, just as we had.

But the T— of my memory, or my parents’ memory, is not the same place as the one Diciembre encountered on their visit. In order to prepare this manuscript, I conducted interviews with Patalarga and Henry in the capital, long conversations from which I’ve already quoted, dialogues that veered forward and back in time. T—, though they were only there very briefly, appeared too: in shadow, as a backdrop for a series of events unfolding in strict adherence to the highlands’ acute surrealist mode (a mere two thousand nine hundred meters above sea level, in case you were wondering). Henry and Patalarga both report that they felt happy to be free of the itinerary, to improvise once more as they had on those first epic Diciembre tours, when they were younger. But according to both men, Nelson was the most enthusiastic of them all, the most eager to get moving again. There was no further mention of Nelson’s heartbreak, Ixta’s pregnancy, or whatever his plans might be as a result. From the moment Henry had pointed to the spot on the map, Nelson was sold. He was fleeing. He wanted to put distance between him and the news that had left him so shaken.

“Yes,” Nelson said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Only Patalarga voiced any reservations, mentioning casually their performance scheduled for the following evening. Henry was unmoved. “We’ll cancel it.”

“Why can’t we wait a day?”

Henry was far too anxious to explain. He pointed at Nelson instead. “Look at the boy. He’s a wreck. We have to keep moving. This is how life is.”

“Don’t do it for me,” Nelson protested.

Patalarga stared at Nelson, as if this last line had been uttered in a foreign language.

“He’s not doing it for you,” Patalarga said. “He doesn’t do things for you.”

Nelson looked to Henry for confirmation, and the playwright shrugged.

There was no mention of Rogelio, or of the prison. No mention of the real reasons Henry felt so drawn to this place he’d never visited before. Up until that point, Patalarga, Henry’s best friend and confidant for more than two decades, had never heard the name Rogelio in his life.

I wondered: Did either Patalarga or Nelson ask for any further explanation from Henry?

“No,” the servant told me. “He was the president.”

They left San Jacinto the next morning. “Fuck you, Roosevelt!” Henry is reported to have shouted from the bus window as it pulled out of the station, though Patalarga was surely more diplomatic when he called to cancel their performance at the English language academy.

Once in T—, what Diciembre noticed first about the town was what anyone would notice, what I noticed every time I visited: the abundance of empty, shuttered houses, roughly half on any given block. Every building, with the exception of the municipal offices, needed a new coat of paint. The town was surrounded on all sides by yellow-green hills that seemed almost lush for this altitude, hills which were themselves dwarfed by jagged snowcapped peaks, so appropriately cinematic that they appeared to have been painted along the horizon by a set designer. If the town itself was notable only for its charming abandonment, the valley where it was placed was one of the loveliest they’d ever seen. That contrast — the spareness of the town and the majesty of its surroundings — made T— seem even smaller and more insignificant than it was. Something similar might be said of many mountain villages, I suppose, but the sense was somehow sharper here, that feeling of isolation, the illusion of being outside time.

Like many settlements one comes across in the highlands, T— was a village without men. Nelson, age twenty-three, Patalarga, forty, Henry, forty-six — Diciembre had essentially no contemporaries. I feel the same absence whenever I visit. There were children; there were elderly; and there were a handful of adolescent boys, who were, in many ways, a species apart: restless, unpleasant, wearing expressions Henry recognized them from his past. “They were like inmates hatching escape plans,” he told me. Rogelio had been one of them — that much was clear to Henry the moment he stepped off the bus from San Jacinto and saw the boys waiting in the plaza. They had a hunger in them, the same desire that had sent Rogelio to the city, pushing him along the accidental and luckless path that ended at Collectors prison, when he was only twenty-one.

Illiterate, hopeless, frightened. Far from home.

T—’s plaza was simple, relatively well tended, and picturesque: the two-story city hall stood on the east side, adorned with a fluttering flag; across from it was the stone cathedral, the oldest, and still the tallest, structure in the area, its empty niche filled once a year for the September festival of the town’s patron saint. There were a few shops along the north end, businesses with spare, dusty shelves, whose doors opened and closed according to a schedule the actors of Diciembre never managed to comprehend. The hotel, called the Imperial, stood along the southern side of the plaza. It had three rooms, each with a couple of saggy twin beds. For Diciembre’s stay, the owner brought in a third, crowding the room so completely that there was hardly any space to walk. The hotel also housed the town’s only restaurant and its only bar, a pleasant balcony where I spent many evenings admiring the sleepy square. My favorite moment of each day came just after sunset, as daylight vanished behind the ridge to the west, and the plaza’s four streetlamps came on. These tiny blooms of orange light warmed me somehow — they were so small, and the dark so immense. I liked to sit and watch them for long stretches, taking in the view of a plaza where nothing at all ever seemed to happen. I’ll admit: the same oppressive calm I’d found maddening as a child had become almost charming.

But what does nothing look like?

A stooped elderly couple ambles by, casting soft shadows beneath these minuscule lights. They are trailed by their grandchildren, or a skinny dog; or perhaps they are alone, walking very close together to stay warm. The wind picks up, and later the moon begins to rise. Soon there will be stars dotting the sky. T— is just like this, night after night — this quiet, this peaceful, this harmless. It was just like this when Nelson and Henry and Patalarga arrived. And it was probably just like this when Nelson was made to stay.

ROGELIO’S MOTHER lived four blocks from the plaza, on the west bank of the river that ran through town. Her home, I should mention, was across the street from the house where I was born. On those periodic trips back, I would sometimes see her, and she seemed ancient to me even then. About our house: it sat empty for more than two decades, until December 2000, when my parents finally tired of life in the capital. My sisters and I were grown, and my mother and father could be comfortable again in T—. Live quietly; cheaply, though with relatively few comforts. They sold the house in the city, and went home, to confront their nostalgia head-on. They were happy to be back, and encouraged us to visit often. My sisters had their families now, their partners and children a ready excuse. I was the youngest. Unattached. The pressure to go fell mostly on me.

“Come home,” my father would say when we spoke, though I had never really thought of T— as home.

Regarding Rogelio’s mother, my old man confessed to me: “I couldn’t believe she was still alive.”

For Henry, the bus ride from San Jacinto was itself an act of bravery, a confrontation with a specific well of fear he’d avoided since the day he woke to the news that his old block in Collectors was burning down, with everyone inside. What is more frightening than our past? Than true love, snatched away? He wasn’t fooled by the town’s peaceful exterior. To him, T— was vacant, a kind of still life, waiting to be animated by his presence. He’d hardly slept the night before, overwhelmed by the sense that a reckoning was imminent.

T— was just as he imagined it would be, or like a museum of itself. Henry checked into the Imperial, and left immediately to look for his lover. He saw traces of Rogelio everywhere: a child has dragged a muddy set of fingers along the white stucco of an exterior wall; they extend nearly fifteen paces, in fading, vaguely parallel lines. Rogelio? Of course not, but still, the very idea filled Henry with expectation. He asked the occasional passerby for Rogelio’s family home, and was met, more often than not, with blank stares. He couldn’t remember Rogelio’s surname; he wondered, in fact, whether he’d ever known it at all. Those he met were friendly enough, but most claimed ignorance, or gave him obscure directions that seemed designed to confuse. He entered a few of the open shops, and inquired there, with about as much luck. With every interaction, his anxiety rose, but he didn’t give up. Finally, after a half hour of wandering, looking for a sign, he stopped an elderly woman in a purple shawl, hoping she might be Rogelio’s mother. She seemed about the right age (though actually he had no idea), and in truth, that was the entirety of his logic. He all but babbled his story, or some version of it, to this startled stranger, who was surprisingly patient, nodding at Henry, as if urging him to go on. (Who this woman in the purple shawl might have been, I can’t say with any certainty.) In any case, she wasn’t kin to Rogelio, she said, but she knew him. And his family. And his mother, who — God bless! — was still alive.

“Oh yes, and her name is Anabel,” the elderly woman added, voice trembling. She pointed a thin, bony finger in the direction of the river, and sent the grateful visitor on his way.

And so, by the early afternoon of his first day in T—, Henry had come to the place he never imagined he’d be: standing beneath the midday sun, on an empty, unpaved street, prepared to knock on the door of the house where his long-dead lover had been raised.

And though I was still in the city on that day, my life begins to intersect with Nelson’s here, at this precise moment. My mother reports that she saw Henry just then. She remembers him for two reasons: one, because he was a stranger, and there are no strangers in T—; and two, because he looked nervous. (“What is there to be nervous about in a town like ours?”) She happened to be walking out of our house at the precise moment of Henry’s arrival, and this anxious stranger cleared his throat when he saw her.

“Is this Mrs. Anabel’s house?” he asked.

“And you know,” my mother admitted later, “I almost said it wasn’t, just because I didn’t like the looks of him.”

But my mother is incapable of lying. Perhaps that’s why she never got used to life in the city.

“Yes, dear, it certainly is,” she said. Then she hurried off to the plaza, already blushing.

MEANWHILE, Patalarga and Nelson were engaged in a search of their own. They were looking for a place to perform. The kind but cautious man who ran the Imperial had demurred, though his underused balcony restaurant would have made a fine stage, indeed. He’d seemed so flummoxed by their inquiry that neither Patalarga nor Nelson pressed him. And anyway, there were other options, better ones: the municipal auditorium, though padlocked at the moment, wasn’t booked until September. Surely the mayor would open it up for a night, if they asked. At this hour, they’d be likely to find him in his fields, on the north side, just past the school. And as long as they were headed that way, the school itself could work too. There was a nice courtyard, suitable for an afternoon show, before the sun went down; the manager of the Imperial even gave them the name of the principal, a nice man, he said, who would be happy to talk, though they should speak loudly, since his hearing was basically shot.

Nelson and Patalarga thanked him and walked north from the plaza in the direction of the school, over a decaying wooden structure which the locals called the New Bridge, and farther, out into the open valley.

When I spoke with Patalarga, I was curious how Nelson seemed to him; after all, he’d heard the news from Ixta only the night before.

“All right,” Patalarga said. “In surprisingly good spirits, in fact. We really had no idea why we’d come to this town, and the newness of it gave him something to focus on.”

But it wasn’t new, exactly; in fact, in terms of Diciembre’s tour, it represented a return to normal. They’d spent the last eight weeks in ramshackle towns just like T—; out-of-the-way places accustomed to long, uneventful days. The anomalous San Jacinto interlude, with its crude nod to urbanism, couldn’t have seemed farther away now. The streets of T— were either hard-packed dirt or cracked cobblestone, but somehow the houses, even the empty ones, had a permanence to them that San Jacinto lacked. A city built almost from scratch in a decade is not likely to have much to recommend it (architecturally, culturally), whereas Rogelio’s hometown, my hometown, even in its worn-down state, seemed destined to last.

Nelson was quiet as they walked, his eyes on the hills, on the sky, on this preposterously scenic valley. Streams of snowmelt bubbled down from the higher elevations, flowing into the creeks and then into the hand-carved canals that fed the surrounding fields. A boy in a red sweater hurried past, pulling a goat by a long rope; Patalarga and Nelson watched the child bound along the path toward the school.

“Charming,” was how Patalarga described it. As striking as any place they’d been on the tour; tumbledown and imperfect, surely a difficult place to live, but lacking the malice of, say, a mining encampment. Or the primitiveness of a logging town. Or the squalor of a smuggling depot. And he was right: T— was different. There was no economic activity to speak of besides farming and the twice-yearly festivals, which brought the town back to life, or to a kind of life. The rest of the year was quiet, and it was this calm that Patalarga and Nelson now breathed in as if it were mountain air itself. The long rainy season had finally ended, and there were no clouds marring the blue sky. In the midday sun, you could feel comfortable in short sleeves.

“It’s beautiful,” Nelson said.

They were the first words Patalarga had heard from him since they’d started their walk. Then he added: “I forgot to say congratulations, you know?”

“I’m sorry?”

Nelson shook his head. “When she told me she was pregnant, I didn’t say congratulations.” He slowed now, head bent toward the ground. “That’s what you’re supposed to say, right?”

They were almost at the school, and could hear a group of children getting ready for recess — the bubbling of their laughter, their impatience. Nelson stopped. “Maybe Ixta’s pregnancy is good news.”

“A baby is always good news,” said Patalarga.

Nelson shook his head. “I mean good news for me.”

His plans for life with Ixta — no matter how whimsical or undefined — might still be relevant. They could move in together, raise the child together. He told Patalarga that he’d woken that morning with the strangest feeling. He could see it now, the shape of another life. It could be his. She might still be his.

For Patalarga, it was a balancing act between offering hope and realism. “So what are you doing here?” he said. “Why don’t you go back?”

“I will. Soon. I have to.” Now he turned the question back on Patalarga: “What do you think I should do?”

Nelson’s eyes blinked back the sun; he really wanted to know.

“What did you tell him?” I asked.

I met with Patalarga three times in the city. We ate meals together, and went over the history of Diciembre with old, yellowed programs in hand, laughing and marveling at the naive ambition of it all. We toured the shabby Olympic, imagining its past and future glory, drank beers at the Wembley as he recounted this story to me, and much more — details and anecdotes and confessions which haven’t made their way into the manuscript. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say we established a kind of rapport. He’s someone I could call up, even today, and expect a friendly conversation, perhaps even an invitation to drinks or dinner.

But of all the questions I asked, for some reason, this was the one that made him most uncomfortable.

His initial, unsatisfying answer was: “A lot of things. You have to remember I couldn’t have known what would happen.”

“Sure,” I said, and let him sit with that.

He rubbed his chin.

“I told Nelson he had every option before him. I told him he could go home and fight for her. That he might win, or might lose, but that there was honor in both.”

“And what did Nelson say?”

“That he wasn’t a fighter, he never had been, and that scared him. And I said that was bullshit. Of course he was a fighter. He was more than that. He was a murderer, wasn’t he? Didn’t he kill me every night onstage?”

At this Nelson laughed; Patalarga too.

“That’s right,” Nelson said. “I’m a killer. Everyone be careful. Everyone watch out.”

12

BEFORE THE MIGRATIONS BEGAN, back when the place was still lively, T— was divided into four districts. The river cut the town into east and west, while the area north of the plaza was considered distinct in culture and class from the blocks south of it. Though T— was small, the lines dividing the districts from one another were sharp and not to be contested.

Rogelio’s family, like mine, was from the southwest, a detail meaningless to all but a handful of elderly still living, and maybe a few thousand former residents of the town. It meant something to my father, but in spite of his best efforts he was unable to pass this sentiment on to his children. This is what I learned about the southwest when I finally asked him: it was a district of large families and relatively modest homes. As a rule, the men did not own land to farm, but were sometimes hired to tend the fields of those who lived in the northwest, just seven or eight blocks away, but a world apart. The others were carpenters or stonemasons, later mechanics and drivers. The women of the district sewed curtains and hemmed clothes, earning small sums which they gave to their husbands for safekeeping. They were (the stereotype says) prone to gossip; specialists in spreading it; and, as a group, unashamed to be the protagonists of the local whispered hearsay. When their men went off in search of work, the women of the southwest district were rumored to receive male visitors late in the evening, after the children had been put to bed. If a marriage on the north side broke up, a woman from the southwest was assumed to be at fault. If something was stolen, the town’s single, part-time policeman visited the southwest, gathering the boys en masse to lecture them about property rights.

As for T—’s children, they all went to the same school, and they might even be friends for a time, but by age nine or ten they’d fully internalized these petty district rivalries. Occasionally the boys fought, but it rarely got serious. As soon as the young men from the southwest understood their position, there were no more problems. They learned, as their fathers had before them, to bow their heads at the appropriate times.

Nowadays, the lines between the districts tend to blur, so that, at this late date, a quasi-outsider like me finds it almost impossible to tell the difference. Every part of T— has been hollowed out, suffered almost equally from the neglect. At its height, the town was home to perhaps seven thousand residents — smaller, that is, than the total current population of Collectors — but when Diciembre arrived a little more than a thousand remained. My parents were the first new residents in more than three years, not counting the occasional highlander paid to look after a property during the rainy season. Rogelio’s older brother, Jaime, had moved a few hours away to San Jacinto when Rogelio was just thirteen, and had eventually become quite wealthy, though he spent very little of that money in T—.

Rogelio’s mother, known to all as Mrs. Anabel, had stayed, along with her daughter, Noelia, who took care of her. The afternoon Henry arrived, after he’d had his brief interaction with my mother and finally gathered the courage to knock on the door — it was Noelia who received him.

“He was polite,” she told me later, “a bit odd, surely, but most of all polite. At least at first. He asked to speak to my mother, said he was a friend of Rogelio’s, and of course I let him in. That’s what we do here. I thought he might have some news.”

Henry walked in, marveling at the disrepair. Even an act as simple as closing the door, he noticed, required a delicate maneuver: lifting as you pushed it shut, then wiggling the warped and swollen wood into place. When it would seem to go no farther, Noelia gently shouldered the door, once, twice, three times, and it was only then that she was able to pull the lock. Henry found it astonishing. One day, he thought, she’ll find herself trapped inside.

The house was just a handful of rooms surrounding a hopelessly overgrown garden. Noelia led him to the living room and asked him to wait. There was a brief, confusing moment when Henry thought Noelia was Rogelio’s mother, but she clarified with a laugh.

“Heavens no!” she said. “He’s my little brother!”

Noelia explained that Mrs. Anabel was just getting up from her nap. “She sleeps quite a lot these days. She isn’t well, you know.”

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry to hear that. If it’s inconvenient, I can …”

Noelia smiled. “No, no. Stay. We don’t get many visitors. I’ll bring her out in a moment.”

Henry thanked her, and was left alone. There were a few wooden chairs, a bench along one wall, and a long narrow dining table adorned with a festive tablecloth, covered in thick clear plastic, and stacked with old newspapers. In the far corner sat a chest topped with a few family photographs in dusty frames, and at the sight of them, Henry froze. He took a step toward the chest, stopped again, and took a step back.

When he described this moment during our interview, Henry felt it necessary to demonstrate his tentative dance for my benefit. He stood and stepped forward, back, forward, back. He wanted nothing more than to see the pictures, to examine them, one by one; to identify Rogelio as an infant, as a boy, as an adolescent, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so. It had been more than a decade since he’d seen his old lover, and he had no real images with which to compare his memories. They’d never taken a picture together. Some of the wealthier inmates had their portraits painted, but neither Henry nor Rogelio had the money for that sort of thing. Meanwhile, this man had been coming to him in dreams since Diciembre left the city on tour. They rode together in Henry’s taxi, sipped coffee down by the boardwalk. In one of these dreams, Rogelio appeared as a student at Henry’s school, sitting uncomfortably at the tiny desk, frowning at an open book. As is often the case in dreams, it was the ordinariness of the images that made them so disconcerting, as if there were another life out there somewhere, one in which the two men lived side by side. This was what Henry was attempting to explain, and somehow, as he moved forward and back before me, I got a sense of his confusion. His uncertainty.

He couldn’t stand to compare his memories or his dreams to the photos. What if he’d remembered incorrectly? What if his memory had tricked him?

So he sat on the bench instead, as far from the photographs as he could manage, facing in the opposite direction.

When Rogelio’s mother finally came, or rather, when she was brought to him, he marveled at how small she was. He recalled that Rogelio had described her as a commanding presence, a woman with an exacting character and booming voice capable of frightening men; but time had faded all that, and what remained was something lighter, gentler. Her fair skin was nearly translucent and intricately wrinkled, like the texture of a piece of aluminum foil, crumpled, and then flattened again by hand. Her thin hair had gone completely white, and she was cloaked in what seemed like dozens of layers, a shawl atop a sweater atop a long-sleeve blouse atop another sweater. She wore knee-high wool socks pulled over a pair of sweatpants, and over that, a blue skirt that fell to the middle of her calves. She belonged to a culture and a generation that respected the cold above all else, a culture that did not trust warmth, but saw it as an occasional and temporary illusion. Cold is permanent, eternal, reliable. The day begins and ends with it.

I know this about her because my grandmother was the same way.

Mrs. Anabel greeted Henry formally, though in a feeble voice: “So you’ve seen my little Rogelio?”

Henry nodded.

“That’s nice.”

Noelia smiled. “Let’s sit in the sun, shall we, Mama?”

The two women turned and went out into the bright afternoon. Noelia steered her mother through the garden with subtle, almost imperceptible movements. They covered the short distance slowly, pausing for a moment to admire one of the cats hiding in the brush. “Kitty, kitty, kitty,” Mrs. Anabel said, and laughed girlishly to herself. Henry watched the two of them from the doorway, admiring their progress, until they were both seated in a pair of low wooden chairs set near an outdoor woodstove. He was so impressed by the delicacy of the maneuver — how carefully Noelia helped her mother into the seat — that he forgot to offer a hand. And they were so used to being ignored, so accustomed to doing it all themselves, that they hardly noticed his oversight. Belatedly, he stepped out to join them, and took the seat facing Mrs. Anabel, their knees almost touching. Noelia sat to his right, the unlit stove serving as the fourth side of their square.

At this point, everything was fine.

They sat in the sun, the three of them enjoying this last instant of calm. Then Noelia asked how he knew Rogelio, and Henry smiled.

It’s true he was prepared to unburden himself.

“We met at Collectors,” he said.

“What’s that?” Noelia asked.

He let out a long sigh. “The prison. We shared a cell there, just before he died.”

Then there was silence, long enough for Henry to realize something was terribly wrong. He saw it in their faces, in the way the women stared at him. Mrs. Anabel’s eyes got very small, and he watched the color drain from the old woman’s cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say.

Mrs. Anabel turned to her daughter. “Did he say died?”

There was terror in her voice.

“No, Mama.”

“What does he mean?” She was speaking in a whisper now. Henry glanced toward the door, just a scamper across the courtyard. Five running steps, seven at most.

“There must be some mistake,” Noelia said.

The early-afternoon sun was blinding.

“Rogelio is not in prison,” said Noelia. “Rogelio is not dead.”

“He isn’t.”

“He lives in California. He has for years.”

There was something very hopeful in her tone.

“I know,” Henry said, because he wanted more than anything to believe it. Maybe he’d gotten it all wrong. Maybe Rogelio was alive.

“Rogelio is a mechanic, like my brother Jaime. He lives outside Los Angeles.”

“Los Angeles,” Henry repeated.

Noelia paused. “Are we talking about the same person?”

Henry didn’t — couldn’t — answer.

“My Rogelio,” said Mrs. Anabel, her voice cracking. “My baby.” With every sentence she uttered, she seemed to be getting smaller and smaller, curving her back and sinking lower in her seat, as if attempting to disappear.

Suddenly Noelia got up and walked off.

For a moment, Henry was left alone with Mrs. Anabel. Her friendliness had all but vanished, and she seemed to cringe in his presence, as if she were afraid he might attack her. He closed his eyes against the bright sun, and tried to remember everything Rogelio had ever told him about this woman. His mother.

He came up blank.

Instead, he said this: “Everything’s going to be fine.”

She raised her eyes to look at him, but didn’t respond.

Just then Noelia returned with a photo, one of the framed images that he’d been too frightened to look at before. She thrust it at Henry.

“Is this him?”

He bent his head toward the photo, using his sleeve to wipe the glass clean. He sat back with a start. It was the face of a young man, a boy. A miracle of a human being. The image was faded and old, but those were the same dashing brown eyes, the same narrow face and high forehead. The same Rogelio. He rubbed the glass some more, and smiled. He had to withstand the urge to jam the frame into the pocket of his coat and flee with it.

Mrs. Anabel and Noelia were waiting.

“No, this isn’t him,” Henry said. “I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake.”

Noelia let out a breath.

“See, Mama? He doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“I’ve upset you both. I shouldn’t have come.”

“Call Jaime,” said Mrs. Anabel. “I don’t trust this one.”

Noelia stood. “Don’t worry, Mama. He’s going now. Say good-bye.”

Henry met Noelia’s stare, and felt ashamed. He handed the photo to Mrs. Anabel, who accepted it without comment. There were tears welling in her eyes. With one hand she took hold of her daughter’s arm, and was gently tugging at her sleeve, like a child demanding attention.

“Where is Rogelio?” she said. “I want to see Rogelio!”

“He’s coming, Mama.”

“Is he dead?”

“Of course he’s not dead!”

Henry stood. There was nothing left to be done. He bent forward in a formal and exaggerated bow, drawing his hands behind his back so that Noelia and Mrs. Anabel wouldn’t see them shaking.

“I beg your pardon,” Henry said. “I’m very sorry to have disturbed you both. I’ll see myself out.”

HENRY HURRIED BACK to the hotel in a state of alarm. “I wanted to leave town right away,” he told me later, but that was impossible. The bus that had brought them to T— that morning had already returned to San Jacinto, and there would be no way out until the next morning. T— felt menacing to him now; a place where people died and were never mourned. He’d thought a great deal about Rogelio in the previous weeks, thoughts which had only intensified since coming upon that map in the window in San Jacinto. He’d imagined many different versions of this encounter, wondering all the while if attempting to make this kind of peace with his former life was a sign of maturity or selfishness. I believe him when he says none of what came after was what he intended. It simply hadn’t occurred to him that Rogelio’s family would not know that their son was dead.

Henry went directly to the Imperial, where he convinced the owner to open the second floor veranda, and bring him a drink. There was only beer, but that was fine. It would do. Henry sat at a table overlooking the plaza, while the owner kept his distance, huddling in a far corner and listening to his transistor radio with the volume down low.

When Patalarga and Nelson appeared an hour later, Henry was halfway through his third beer. He wasn’t exactly happy to see them, and would’ve preferred to be alone for a while longer. Still, he stood to greet his friends, and when he did, his glass tipped over. No one moved to catch it. The three of them watched it roll slowly and stop at the edge, while the beer spread over the surface of the table and then tumbled over in a long thin line.

“Graceful,” said Patalarga.

Henry righted the glass, shook his fingers dry, and called for a towel.

“Leave it,” the owner shouted from across the bar.

Henry wiped his hands on his jeans. It was midafternoon; the sun was high. The entire valley was bathed in light, and the streets of T— looked like an unused stage set. It all gave him a headache.

“Well, what is it?” Henry said.

Nelson was fully recovered, or seemed so. He beamed with satisfaction. “We have a show tonight. The mayor is going to open up the auditorium for us.”

“Tonight?”

Patalarga frowned. “Yes, tonight. This is good news, Henry.”

“It was,” he answered. “Two hours ago it was great news. But I’m not sure it’s so good now.”

Nelson and Patalarga waited for an explanation, but Henry had no idea where to begin. If he were just quiet long enough, he thought, maybe they could avoid the show altogether. His friends stared.

Finally he relented. “I went to see the family of an old friend of mine who died in Collectors.”

“Okay,” said Patalarga.

“That’s why we’re here. Why we came. But my friend’s family, his mother, his sister — they had no idea he was dead. I upset them. They accused me of lying. They threw me out.”

“They threw you out?” Nelson asked.

“Sort of.”

The three friends were quiet for a moment.

Nelson seemed unconvinced. “And?”

It seemed so simple to Henry, so obvious.

“And I feel bad.”

Nelson laughed in spite of himself, and turned to Patalarga. “He feels bad?”

Patalarga didn’t answer, just shook his head and turned away.

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Henry said.

Nelson glared. “Why’s that exactly? What don’t I understand?”

“That I can’t do the show.”

“You’re canceling?”

“Henry, you can’t cancel,” Patalarga said.

Henry crossed his arms over his chest. “I am. I just did.”

What happened next surprised them all: Nelson pushed Henry with two hands, sending the playwright tumbling backward. One of the chairs tipped over with a crash, and the empty beer glass toppled over once more, this time landing on the floor.

Nelson stood over Henry, his face red with fury. Perhaps he was a fighter, after all.

Patalarga forced his way between them, as best he could, trying to calm Nelson down. It wasn’t easy. “What’s wrong with you? Why did you bring us here?” Nelson shouted. “What do you want from us?”

“I’d never seen him like that,” Patalarga told me later.

He managed to push Nelson back, enough for Henry to get to his feet. The playwright stood, straightened his shirt, and raised a hand to the startled owner. Then he faced Nelson, glaring. He took a deep breath. There was some swagger to him.

“Patalarga,” he said. “Did I deserve that?”

“Honestly?”

Henry nodded.

“Yes.”

Henry looked puzzled for a moment, then deflated. That flash of vigor vanished as quickly as it had come; he considered his friends, the empty veranda, the plaza before them, and felt small.

“You’re wondering why,” Nelson said, still scowling. “I’ll tell you. You’re being selfish. For a change.”

Henry slumped into a chair. “Is it true?” he asked Patalarga, with searching eyes.

Patalarga nodded.

Henry rubbed his eyes. “Okay,” he said. “You win. We’ll do it.”

AT ROGELIO’S CHILDHOOD HOME, the situation was deteriorating, and Noelia had begun to worry. This was the story these two women had been told, the story they knew: their beloved Rogelio had gone first to the city for work, then immigrated to the United States in 1984 at age twenty-one. Jaime told them all this, in broad strokes, with just enough detail to seem true. Rogelio had braved border crossings and skirted civil wars in Central America, negotiated Mexico by bus, and passed into the United States through a tunnel in Nogales. Eventually he made it to the city of Los Angeles. As far as they knew, that’s where he remained; and he hadn’t returned to visit only because he had no papers. Jaime claimed to speak to him roughly once a year, and they believed him. Noelia had never doubted it; and as for Mrs. Anabel, she held on to the idea with fierce resolve. Every year for her younger son’s birthday, she’d baked him a cake.

If Mrs. Anabel’s gullibility on this count seems far-fetched, remember this was T—: the rows of padlocked houses are all the context one needs. In another place it might strain credulity, but here nothing could be more normal than Rogelio disappearing for seventeen years, and still being thought of as alive. My father still speaks warmly of people he hasn’t seen or heard from in forty-five years, and by the tone of his voice you might expect them to appear tomorrow and renew their unbreakable friendship. Time means something very different in a place like T—. As does distance. As does memory. Almost every family had a son who’d gone off into the world. Some sent money; some vanished without a trace. Until proof to the contrary was offered, they were all to be thought of as living. It was the town’s unspoken credo.

The truth about Rogelio’s fate, the story Henry shared, had upset this balance. Mrs. Anabel was the most affected, naturally; even on a good day, dementia made her subject to mood swings she was unable to control. But that afternoon, the very thought of Rogelio dead threw her into a panic, and not long after Henry had gone, she was weeping with rage and helplessness.

“She kept calling for Rogelio, for her baby,” Noelia told me later. “I didn’t know what to do. If he was dead, why had no one told her? Shouldn’t a mother always know these things? Why had no one told me?”

A few minutes before three, she managed to give her mother a sedative and coax her back to bed. This was not easy. She deflected all questions about Rogelio until the old woman was asleep, then Noelia pried open the door to the street and hurried into town. If Henry, Patalarga, and Nelson had not been caught up in their own discussion, they might have seen her rushing across the plaza, one hand clutching the hem of her skirt so as not to drag its edge across the cobblestones.

It was a little after three in the afternoon when she finally got her brother Jaime on the line. She tried to explain it as best she could, but she herself didn’t quite understand what had happened, why this stranger had appeared out of nowhere, talking about their Rogelio. Jaime didn’t seem to get it either, or pretended not to, and finally Noelia lost her patience. She changed tacks, stopped trying to explain.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The sound of her own voice startled her. Her hands were shaking. She hadn’t shouted in years.

On the other end of the line, there was silence. Then: “About what?”

“About Rogelio,” she said.

She could hear Jaime’s long sigh. “Does Mama know?”

“She’s in terrible shape.”

“I’m on my way,” he said. A moment later he’d hung up.

Jaime got in his car and arrived by early evening, just as the yellow lights in the plaza were flickering to life, and just as Diciembre was preparing to go onstage before a few dozen audience members in the municipal auditorium. Nelson had won the argument, perhaps the first time in the history of Diciembre that Henry had lost one.

It was June 12, 2001. As it turned out, this would be the troupe’s last show together. Though they didn’t know it yet, Diciembre’s first tour in fifteen years was over.

13

THE PREPARATIONS for Diciembre’s performance in T— began around five, when the mayor’s deputy, a cheerful high school student in his last year, unlocked the municipal auditorium. The deputy’s name was Eric. He was young and fresh-faced, and he’d be leaving T— within a few months.

“This is it!” he said brightly.

“This is it,” repeated Nelson, whistling a long, fading note to himself. He dropped his end of the heavy duffel bag, and considered the space before him.

The auditorium was one of the town’s newer buildings, a charmless and impractical metal box that stayed cold in the rainy season and hot in the dry. It had been underutilized for years, suffering from a neglect that reminded Diciembre of their spiritual home, the Olympic. Eric left them just inside the door, and slid along the wall to the raised stage. There, he disappeared behind a curtain and began to turn on the lights, first one row, then another, then a few at once, and so on. Henry, Patalarga, and Nelson stood with arms crossed, watching the fluorescent tubes above hum on and now off, in various combinations. None cast a particularly pleasing light on the dank space, but the young man finally settled on the arrangement that was the least offensive.

“How’s this?” he called out from behind the curtain.

Henry held his hands out in front of him, fingers spread. His white presidential gloves were a grayish yellow.

“It’s terrific,” said Patalarga.

They carried their things backstage, and began to unpack and then change, each man floating to different corners of the dressing area, hardly speaking. Henry was brooding; Nelson seemed distracted; Patalarga fretted about his costume. Somehow his clothes didn’t feel right, he said to no one in particular. Had they shrunk, or had he put on weight? There was no mirror, so they had to rely on each other, which might have worked if they’d been in a different collective mood. But they weren’t. The three of them dressed sloppily, and scarcely spoke. At six-thirty, Henry convened a brief meeting to go over some rough spots in the play, but this was entirely unnecessary, of course. What rough spots was he referring to exactly? What surprises could the performance hold at this point? Still, Nelson and Patalarga listened to Henry’s rambling instructions out of respect and a sense of duty. He might have gone on longer, but soon the people began shuffling in, and the three men fell into a reverent silence. It’s a sound every actor loves, and, in a sense, lives for: the murmur of a crowd, the patter of feet, hum of strange voices. You perk up in excitement, anticipation. You begin to imagine who your audience will be, what they will look like. Before you ever cast eyes on them, they are real people. Before you ever see them, you are connected.

Around seven-fifteen, Eric appeared again. He poked his head behind the curtain and announced it was about time to begin.

“How many are out there?” asked Henry.

“Thirty or so,” the young man said. “Thirty-five, I’d guess.”

Henry shook his head. “Don’t guess. Go back and count them.”

Eric bowed his head, and returned a few moments later with downcast eyes. “Twenty-five. I’m sorry. But there may be more coming.”

Patalarga grinned, and thanked the boy. Eric’s disappointment was touching. He’d played for audiences far smaller. “We’ll begin in a minute.”

Eric nodded, and just as he was turning to go, Henry stopped him.

“Just one more question,” the playwright said. “Do you know everyone in this town?”

“Just about.”

“Good. So, is Noelia out there? Or her mother, Mrs. Anabel? Do you know who I’m talking about?”

The young man looked confused. “Yes. Why?”

“They’re old friends,” said Nelson. Until that moment, you wouldn’t have guessed he was listening at all. He and Henry locked eyes.

Eric nodded, as if he understood. “Well, Mrs. Anabel doesn’t really leave the house much.”

“So she’s not here?”

“I haven’t seen her. Not Noelia either.”

Henry thanked him, and the deputy disappeared on the other side of the curtain.

“Are you expecting them?” Patalarga asked. “Do you want them to come?”

“I don’t know.” Henry looked genuinely puzzled. “I really don’t know.”

A few moments later, the curtains parted, and the show began.

THE DRIVE from San Jacinto to T— is roughly four hours. You can shave a little off that, but not much. The road is narrow and the consequences of misjudging a turn in the high mountains are fatal. Still, Jaime made good time. Of the protagonists in these events, he’s one of the few that has refused to speak to me, but I can imagine what he was thinking as he drove along those narrow, twisting roads. He was thinking of his brother, Rogelio, and the facts of his death. Whether Rogelio was angry when he died, or scared. Whether Rogelio blamed him, or felt abandoned. He was thinking how often he’d made this trip, and how it never changed. The scale of the mountains. The smallness of everything else. He’d known about Rogelio’s death all along, and kept his younger brother’s imprisonment a secret, just as he kept the nature of his business a secret. This was easier than you might expect. In T—, the riot and subsequent massacre at Collectors had never made much of an impact.

Jaime arrived around the time Diciembre was coming out onstage. At this point, the story of that night moves along parallel tracks: Patalarga appears beneath the pallid yellow lights, before a small but expectant crowd. He opens with a monologue about loneliness, delivered on this particular night with greater feeling than ever. The mayor’s young deputy stands at the auditorium’s back wall, wearing a dark suit and watching the proceedings with relish. He reports that the crowd was entranced. (“We’d never had a theater company in town before,” he told me later.) At the same time, Jaime rushes to the home where he was raised, embraces his sister, and hurries behind her to their mother’s room. Brother and sister stand in the doorway and watch their mother sleep, listening for her shallow breaths. Without exchanging a word, they marvel at her fragility, the way one might contemplate a newborn. Jaime steps forward, to her bedside, and places a palm on his mother’s forehead. He strokes her hair.

“She was very upset?” he asks Noelia.

His sister answers with a nod.

By the time Henry steps out onto the stage, looking slightly less presidential than usual — by then, Jaime and his sister, Noelia, are sitting in the living room, going over the details of a very well-kept family secret. Not much is said about Rogelio’s unfortunate arrest. Collectors is described in shorthand — hell, Jaime says. And everything after that can be reduced to a single sentence. Their little brother was dead. He’d been dead so long now it felt almost dishonest to mourn him.

All afternoon, since Henry’s visit, Noelia had known it was true. She’d known it as she put her frantic mother to bed, as she raced across the plaza, as she waited for her brother to arrive. A stranger does not appear and announce a death by mistake. Very few people are cruel in this way, and Henry had not struck her as cruel. He’d looked at the photo of Rogelio and claimed not to know him — and it was this act of mercy which made her like him, in spite of everything. It was also the moment that had confirmed his story.

For an actor, this man was not a good liar.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked her brother, the one she still had left.

But Jaime didn’t answer. He wanted to know one thing. “Who told you? Who was this person?”

“He said his name was Henry,” Noelia answered.

“And where is he?”

“At the auditorium. They told me in town he was in a play tonight.”

“A play?” Jaime frowned. There was a moment of silence, and then: “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill that faggot motherfucker.”

Noelia looked up. There was hatred in his eyes. She understood then that her brother knew this stranger, this Henry. And it frightened her. She began to cry. Her brother watched her without speaking. He didn’t reach out to her, and Noelia attempted to cry quietly, so as not to disturb him.

They spent many minutes like this, but by a quarter to eight, Jaime was unclenching his jaw, drawing his creaky wooden chair closer to his sister, and telling her he was sorry. These were not words he said every day. She bowed her head, wiped her tears, and accepted his apology.

“What will we tell mother?” she said.

“Nothing,” Jaime answered. “We won’t be telling her a goddamn thing.”

They left shortly after, closing the door carefully so as not to wake Mrs. Anabel. It was a cold night, and the quarter moon was just beginning to rise above the edge of the mountains. By the time they passed through the doors of the municipal auditorium, Diciembre had come to my favorite scene in The Idiot President. In it, the president is having his correspondence read aloud. The letters come from the country’s citizens, and they all begin with a long list of fairly standard honorifics: Your Highness, Your Honor, Your Benevolence. The president listens (or pretends to listen) to the appeals — pleas for work, for relief, for mercy, for land, for refuge — but he is unmoved. His posture is regal, his bearing severe. “Statuesque,” says the note in the script. Alejo, Nelson’s character, the idiot son, and Patalarga’s, the servant, take turns reading one letter each, while the president files his nails and brushes his hair. Over the course of the scene, a kind of competition arises between the son and the servant. Who can read better? Who can make this routine act more pleasing and more interesting to the president? Henry’s character, naturally, doesn’t notice at all, or pretends not to notice, but we do: the idiot son and the servant shoot each other angry, jealous looks and begin to read over each other, interrupting. The lists of honorifics preceding each letter becomes longer, and more ridiculous, until it’s clear that Alejo and the servant are simply making them up. Their voices grow louder, and the increasingly bizarre titles are delivered rapid-fire—

“To our dear leader, personification of the nation’s purest desires!

To the bright sun of liberty, most high and most alarming!

To the most chaste and supreme one, munificent, magnificent, and beneficent!”

— words tumbling out and overlapping, until it’s just a jumble, no longer discernible words but only noise.

“They watched the whole scene without sitting,” Eric told me. “I noticed them because Henry had asked me about Noelia.”

What were they thinking?

Or more specifically, what was Jaime thinking?

Though he’d lived in San Jacinto for more than two decades, Rogelio’s older brother was a well-known figure in town. He’d done well for himself, made money — and nothing earned the people’s respect like money. That night of the play in T—, he stood beside his sister with his arms crossed, squinting at the stage, staring intently at Henry. He hadn’t seen the playwright in fifteen years, but he knew it was him. He had no trouble recognizing that face, those gestures, that posture.

According to Henry, they’d met only once, in Collectors, a scene I imagine Jaime was playing over in his mind. A winter’s day in 1986, in the yard of Block Seven. Jaime had come from San Jacinto to see his brother. He spent a few hours with Rogelio, strolling up and down the yard. Seen from a distance, they were like fish caught in a current, Rogelio and Jaime and all the others. Henry had been watching them all afternoon. Then visitors’ hours were almost over, and as the two brothers were saying their good-byes, Henry couldn’t resist any longer. “I’m not sure why or how,” he told me later, “it just came out.” Perhaps he was hurt that he hadn’t been introduced, though he found that hard to admit. He barreled toward them now, furious, protective, jealous, catching both brothers by surprise.

This is what he said to Jaime that afternoon in 1986, in a voice far too loud for Collectors:

“You need to take better care of your brother.”

Jaime frowned. “I’m sorry?”

“You owe him that. I know what you do.”

“Who’s this?” Jaime asked his brother.

“No one,” said Rogelio.

There was no time for that betrayal to sting. Henry had already gone too far. “It doesn’t matter who I am. I know who you are. You’re the reason he’s in here.”

Jaime glared at this stranger. To his brother, he said, “Get this idiot away from me.”

“That’s enough, Henry.”

It was more than enough, but he couldn’t stop. He was shouting now: “You have the money. I know what you do!”

Jaime shook his head, then he threw a punch at Henry, landing it on his jaw. Henry staggered and fell. Jaime threw an arm around Rogelio, and together they walked to the gate of Block Seven. Jaime never visited Collectors again. Rogelio didn’t speak to Henry for three days.

Now, onstage at T—’s municipal auditorium, the president accepted tribute from his son and his servant. As the scene devolved into noise, Jaime and Noelia found a place to sit.

“Who is he?” Noelia whispered to her older brother, but Jaime didn’t respond.

For Noelia, the next forty minutes were something of a revelation. She’d never seen a play before, except the ones the schoolchildren put on every spring to commemorate the founding of the town. This particular play wasn’t necessarily easy to follow, and as the scenes barreled toward their conclusion, she began to wonder about the young lead. He was handsome, she thought, and it occurred to her he was the same age as Rogelio had been the last time she saw him. That was all. It was an idle thought. They didn’t look alike; it’s just that Nelson was an odd sight in a place like T—. He was a young man in his twenties with a drifting gaze and bad posture. He looked lost, and perhaps this is why she thought of her missing, suddenly dead, brother.

Perhaps it was something else; when pressed, Noelia admitted she didn’t really know. “There was something about him,” she said, and that was all she could manage.

Meanwhile Jaime sat by her side, stone-faced. The actors floated back and forth across the stage, recited their lines, made their jokes, and the audience laughed, or shouted with joy, or fell into a meditative hush. Jaime was unmoved. The play’s climax, when Nelson’s character chats up the servant, tricks him, and then kills him — this was particularly powerful that evening, and the audience responded with gasps that could be heard all over that chilly auditorium. According to Eric, there were even some tears. When asked if it was Diciembre’s best performance of the tour, Patalarga was unequivocal. “Of course,” he told me. “Nelson’s anger that night was real. And Henry’s despair was too.”

Noelia agreed: “It gave me chills.”

The play ended ten minutes before nine in the evening, to sustained applause.

There was no one to close the curtain, so the three actors spent a moment onstage, smiling and waving at the audience. Then the clapping died down, and most of those in attendance headed toward the exit. But not everyone. Not Jaime. He stood, lingered in place for a moment, rocking side to side almost imperceptibly and never taking his eyes off the stage.

“Are you all right?” Noelia asked.

Her brother nodded.

“Should we go, then?”

“Not yet.”

“Please,” said Noelia. “Don’t hurt anyone.”

Jaime turned to her then. There was a look in his eyes that she couldn’t place, almost like pity.

Then he walked straight forward, pushing through the metal folding chairs that stood between him and the performers. I imagine something akin to a parting of the waters, the chairs clanging this way and that, Jaime cutting a rough path through them with long, heavy steps. Eric, still lingering along the wall, thought the gesture was rude, but chose not to say anything. It was Jaime, after all. You didn’t say anything to Jaime.

Nelson, Patalarga, and Henry had begun to gather their props: the scattered letters; the presidential scarf used to mimic a hanging in the third scene and then tossed off to the side at the beginning of the second act; the flimsy but surprisingly realistic plastic knife used in the murder scene. The houselights had come on, but they were weak, and none of the actors noticed Jaime until he was standing before the stage. He called Henry by name. Noelia hadn’t moved from her seat. She saw the whole thing.

“He said something to the president, the one who’d come to see us.”

Henry knelt down until they were almost at eye level with each other. They exchanged a few words.

“I saw my brother nodding. Then I saw the president’s expression drop. He was facing me, you see. He went pale. My brother grabbed him by the collar, pulled him from the stage, and tossed him to the floor.” She paused and took a deep breath. “At that point everything got very confusing.”

From the corner of his eye, Patalarga saw Henry tip off the stage. “My first thought was that he’d fallen, that it was an accident.” He hadn’t really paid much attention to the man Henry was talking to, but then he heard a shout.

Jaime had Henry on his back (once more, all these years later), but this time, he got six or seven good kicks in before anyone could respond. “I jumped off the stage and tried to grab the guy, but he shook me off,” Patalarga told me later. “It was the second time in five hours that I’d had to defend Henry.” For his trouble, he caught an elbow to the face.

Patalarga lunged at Jaime again, and by this time Nelson and Eric had rushed over too; together they were able to pull him away. Jaime was shouting, struggling against them, but no one seems to recall what he was yelling.

They all remember Henry though, the shock of him: the president lay on the floor, writhing and covering his face with his bloodied white gloves. His lip was busted, his nose broken. There was blood on his chin, and though he didn’t know it yet, two of his ribs were cracked. He lay on his back, taking shallow breaths; after a moment, he opened his eyes. The lights above blurred in and out of focus.

And all the while, Noelia sat frozen in her seat. It was extraordinary, the weight she felt, the absolute impossibility of moving. She held her hands tightly in her lap, and gave in to it. Everyone else had gone. This was all part of the play, an extra scene performed just for her, as if to reveal some special secret. This was why they all fear my brother, Noelia remembers thinking. This is why they’re scared of him. Maybe those stories she’d heard were true, after all.

Nelson, Patalarga, and Eric held Jaime, while Henry got to his feet, holding the edge of the stage to steady himself. The prop knife was there, just an arm’s length away, and he grabbed it. With that, Henry turned to face his attacker once more, brandishing it with surprising conviction.

“Come on!” Henry shouted. He was manic, dancing back and forth, and carving the air with his plastic knife. His voice echoed through the nearly empty auditorium. “Come on, you asshole!”

For all Henry’s fury, there was no threat in the spectacle. Jaime eased, and his captors instinctively relaxed with him. They still held him, but without the same force or fear or urgency. Patalarga was afraid his old friend might faint before them.

“Okay,” Jaime said. “Enough. If I wanted to kill this piece of shit, I would’ve done it already.”

He shook himself free. Eric, Nelson, and Patalarga backed off.

At that, Henry stopped. Out of breath, he dropped both arms to his side, still gripping the knife in his left hand. He and Jaime locked eyes.

“Tell me you remember me now,” Jaime said. “Go ahead. Think real hard.”

Henry nodded. “You’re Rogelio’s brother.”

“Good,” said Jaime.

Henry bowed his head. He dropped the plastic knife, and with his sleeve wiped a thin line of blood from his chin. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Jaime raised an eyebrow. “Are you?”

Noelia was still pegged to her seat, watching it all. Henry called out in her direction: “I’m sorry! I’m very sorry!”

It was at this point that she finally snapped to. It was not a play after all; it was real, and once again that strange man was talking to her. His voice, shouted across the auditorium, was ghostly. She stood, and as she rearranged her shawl, noted that they were all looking at her: these men, her brother, the actors, the mayor’s deputy. She took a deep breath and walked down the path Jaime had made only a few moments before, through the carelessly strewn metal chairs, to the foot of the stage, where the lights shone brightest. As she got closer, it was as if the air changed. There was heat pulsing off these men, the lingering remains of the fight. She saw Henry up close and gasped. His right eye had begun to swell, and his shirt was ripped at the collar. He leaned against the stage, as if he might tumble over at any moment.

She turned to her brother.

“Shame on you!”

Jaime shrugged and looked down at his hands, his knuckles, the way one might admire a well-built tool or a machine.

There was quiet.

MUCH LATER I asked Henry about that night. This was back in the city, months after the events recounted here had run their course. I was trying to piece it all together based on versions provided by Patalarga, Noelia, and to a lesser extent, Eric. As for Henry, his recollections were cloudy. He talked at great length about his recovery, the slow easing of pain over the weeks that followed that night; but the play, the fight, its immediate aftermath, that, he said, was all a blur.

Instead he talked about fight scenes in general. The fake kind. He talked about how they are staged; and he seemed more comfortable speaking this way, in the abstract. Like any scene involving large numbers of cast members, Henry told me, fight scenes are complicated and unwieldy. A good one must mimic chaos without being chaotic, must be confusing without being confused. The crowd must delight in the tension, while the actors themselves are perfectly relaxed. Henry ran his fingers through his hair, and leaned forward, briefly animated, evidently pleased with this series of contradictory phrases. Did I get it? Did I understand?

And I began to wonder if he saw it all as a performance. If that night, when the play ended and the attack began; when his past, as represented by Jaime, stood before him, and his friends demanded answers; at that point, was he conscious of himself as a performer?

“I don’t know,” he said. “Jaime kicked the shit out of me. I fell to the ground. I grabbed a plastic knife. I wanted to defend myself. I wanted someone to save me. Is this performing?”

“I’m asking you.”

Henry rubbed his face. He stood from his seat, and raised his shirt with his left hand. “There were bruises here,” he said, pointing to his stomach and chest. “And here. And here. These two ribs”—he pinched one and then the other—“these two were broken.”

“I know. That’s not my question. I didn’t say you were faking it.”

He frowned. “So what are you asking, then?”

“When it was over, were you aware that a delicate negotiation had begun? Were you careful as you were playing it?”

“Of course I was careful. I was scared this man might kill me.”

That night, Jaime wore a grimace, aloof and distant. He wasn’t handsome, Patalarga told me later, but he had “an interesting face.” His too-small mouth stayed closed, lips pressed together with the hint of a smile. People were afraid of him and he enjoyed that. His sleek black hair had gone wild in the skirmish, but he didn’t mind.

“I guess we were expecting him to say something,” Patalarga said, “but he didn’t.”

Instead, it was Noelia who spoke, addressing her brother: “Do they know too?” she asked, her voice desperate. “Do they know Rogelio is dead? Does everyone know but me?”

Patalarga responded. “Madam, I can assure you we don’t know anything.”

She looked at them all skeptically. Her brother and Henry nodded.

“Just to be clear, Rogelio is …?” asked Nelson.

“My little brother,” Noelia said.

“My cell mate,” said Henry. “My friend.”

The six of them made a wary circle, with Jaime pushing in close so they could feel the threat of him. Eric fidgeted. Nelson picked the plastic knife off the floor, and wiped its flimsy blade against his leg. It was Eric who told me this detail: he found it was almost tender, the way the actor cared for this prop, the way he wiped the blade as if it were real. During the performance, when Alejo murders the servant, Eric had been impressed. He remembers thinking: He looks like he could use it, and for next few minutes, Eric said, while they all spoke, Nelson held the knife at the ready, as if he might.

“How’s your mother now?” Henry asked.

“She was in a fit all afternoon,” Noelia answered. “I had to give her a sedative, the poor thing.”

“She’s ill?” asked Patalarga.

“She was fine until he came,” Jaime said.

Noelia interrupted. “No. No no no no no. That isn’t true, Jaime. It just isn’t.” Her shoulders were shaking now. “Mama’s been faltering. She doesn’t remember. She talks to our father all the time and he’s been dead for years. She doesn’t know the difference. But when you said Rogelio was dead … Well, you know what happened.”

“I’m sorry,” Henry said, not for the last time.

Noelia wiped a tear from her eye, and sighed. Henry would have offered her the presidential handkerchief, only it was dotted with blood. They were silent, out of respect for a woman’s tears.

“How did my brother die?” she asked finally.

Henry offered a weak smile, and would’ve answered, but Jaime spoke instead. “There was trouble, that’s all.”

His face was blank, impassive, and Noelia didn’t press him any further. She looked up, trying to catch his attention, but he had his eyes locked on Henry.

“What do you want from me?” Henry asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

The conversation was Jaime’s once more. He pressed his hands together, palms flat.

“Why were you in that prison, Henry? Will you tell my sister that? I’d like her to know the kind of person you are.”

Henry shrugged. “I was accused of terrorism.”

“Falsely,” added Patalarga.

Jaime smiled. “So this terrorist comes to my house, to my family, and tells my mother awful things. Things I never wanted her to hear. She’s sick. She isn’t well.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you are. Here’s what I want. I want you to tell my mother you were wrong. That you made a mistake. That this was all a misunderstanding.” His eyes narrowed, and there was anger in his voice. “I want you to say you’re very sorry, and I want you to convince that poor woman that this was all your fault, and leave her mind at peace. I want her to have no doubt that her youngest child is alive.”

“I told her that already,” Henry said.

“It didn’t work.”

Patalarga shook his head. “Look at him. Do you really think that going back to her, looking like that, is going to help anything?”

“Put some makeup on him. She won’t even notice.”

“Jaime, be reasonable,” said Noelia.

“I am reasonable. He comes. He apologizes. He goes.”

“I’m apologizing now.”

Jaime shook his head. “You apologize to her. Is this too much to ask?”

Henry dropped his head into his chest. “No,” he said.

14

THAT NIGHT IN T—, after Jaime and Noelia had gone; after the props had been put away, and the auditorium padlocked; after Eric had said good night; Diciembre trudged back to the Imperial. Everything in town was shuttered, and no one was out. When they got to the hotel, it was as if the man at the front desk had already heard what had happened. He handed them the key with a sad shake of the head.

The three friends went up to their room. The mood was funereal. Without much talk, they prepared for the long trip back to the coast. Henry began by removing the red presidential sash, the presidential eye mask, the white presidential gloves, which were no longer white. These items were all folded and packed away. The presidential dress shirt too, its ruffles now spotted with drops of blood. Patalarga followed: he pulled off the smock he’d worn almost every night for the previous months, untied the colorful pants cinched at the waist with rope, and removed his rubber sandals. Then, Nelson: the riding boots and pants, a wig he wore briefly in the third act. From his bag, he pulled a set of hand cymbals, played by the servant in one key scene, a flourish offered whenever the president wanted one of his own witty statements celebrated. “You sure you don’t want to keep those out for later?” Patalarga said, but no one was in the mood for jokes. The fake knife was put away as well, wrapped in an old pair of socks, as if its plastic blade needed protecting. It was a simple production, really; everything was packed away in a matter of minutes.

Then Henry found his way back to the window.

“Let’s go out,” he said after staring at the plaza for a while. “Can we go out?” and to his surprise, his friends were not opposed. It was early yet, and none were ready to sleep. They seemed to know instinctively that if they stayed indoors, the gloom might overcome them; so they headed out, into the night and toward the school, the same direction that Patalarga and Nelson had gone only a few hours before.

When they were nearing the edge of the town, crossing one of the bridges toward the fields, Henry began to talk. It might have been less an apology, and more a listing of regrets — but it was something, and this was important. It was a start. Nelson and Patalarga listened. We never should have revived his moribund play, Henry said. Another one, perhaps, but why this play, which carried with it so many ghosts? This play, which had caused nothing but trouble since it had been written? He went on: we never should have gone on tour, never should have left the city, where we were safe, or interrupted our lives with these quixotic aspirations toward theater, toward art. He spoke with great feeling, but there was a fallacy at the center of his logic. The idea to revive the play had not been his but Patalarga’s. The idea to take Diciembre out on tour once more — he’d had to be convinced, after all, and the one who’d done that convincing was Patalarga.

“I told them it was my fault,” said Patalarga. “I wanted to take that burden off Henry. He was eating himself alive.”

Of their walk that night, Patalarga remembers most clearly the sky, indigo graced with stars. Clouds had followed them everywhere throughout their travels; they’d suffered cold rain and hail, but now, here was their reward.

“You should’ve told us about Rogelio,” Patalarga said.

He wanted this to come out differently than it did: he hadn’t intended it to be a complaint but an affirmation of solidarity. He didn’t feel betrayed, or even disappointed; only confused. For years, Henry had insisted on believing that he was alone. He’d refused help, refused counsel. His marriage had fallen apart. His life had stalled. It was painful to watch.

“What I mean is, you could have. We would’ve listened.”

Henry nodded. “Thank you,” he said, but he was very far away.

The cold was tolerable; you could even say it was invigorating. They’d come to the school, just five classrooms and an office arranged around a barren courtyard, beyond which lay the vast planted fields of T—. There was a low concrete retaining wall at the edge of a rusting playground, and here, Nelson and Henry sat. Patalarga had his back to them, his eyes trained on the town they’d left behind. Without realizing it, and without much effort, they’d risen in elevation, just enough to sense the faintest glow of light from the plaza. This place is so very small, Patalarga thought. It could be erased in a moment, and it would be as if none of this had ever happened. Not the play. Not this evening. Not Rogelio, or any of us. It would all be a rumor from a far-off place, something folded into the long history of that which has been forgotten. Somehow, Patalarga found this thought comforting.

He turned to share this mundane insight with his friends, and noticed, to his surprise, that they were holding hands. He couldn’t tell if it had just happened, or if they’d walked a long way like this without his noticing. Nor could he say who had reached out for whom, who’d offered comfort and who’d accepted it; but in a sense, it didn’t matter.

Patalarga turned away. He sat on the wall, and kept his eyes trained skyward. When he looked again, his friends had let go.

But for a light breeze, the valley was almost silent.

“Do you want to know?” Henry said.

“Know what?” Nelson asked.

“What he was like. Who he was.” Henry sighed. “I’ll tell you. If you want to know, I’ll tell you.”

ROGELIO WAS THE YOUNGEST OF THREE, the skinniest, the least talkative. As a boy he slept with Jaime in the same room, and his earliest, most profoundly comforting memories were of those late nights, before bed: the chatter between them, the camaraderie. Then Jaime left for San Jacinto, and shortly afterward, when Rogelio was eight, his father died. In the months afterward, Rogelio began to skip school and spend hours walking in the hills above town. He liked to be alone. He gathered bits of wood, and used his father’s tools to carve tiny animals, birds, lizards, that sort of thing, which he kept in a box under his bed. They weren’t particularly lifelike, but were surprisingly evocative, and at age twelve, he presented one to a girl he liked, as a gift. Her name was Alma. With trembling hands and a look of horror on her face, she accepted it, and for the next week she avoided his gaze. The other children whispered about him whenever he came near. There was no need to hear the exact words, for their meaning was clear enough. Alma’s family came from the northwest district. The following year, at age thirteen, Rogelio quit school officially, and his mother and older brother agreed there was no practical reason for him to stay in T— any longer; so he left for San Jacinto, to join Jaime.

Rogelio was small for his age, but tough, good with his hands and his fists. Unlike his older brother, he didn’t have a temper, but instead possessed an equanimity the entire family found almost disconcerting. He’d been shunned all his life, or that’s how he felt, and he’d grown accustomed to it. He loved his brother, looked up to him, and never worried whether Jaime loved him in return. He was trusting. He could follow instructions, had decent mechanical intuition, but he could not read. Jaime even tried to teach him, but soon gave up: the boy kept getting his letters backward. A decade later in Collectors, Henry would be the first person to tell him there was a condition called dyslexia.

“How about that?” Rogelio had said, but his face registered nothing — not regret or shame or even curiosity — as if he were unwilling to contemplate the ways his life might have been different if he’d had this information sooner.

For those first couple of years in San Jacinto, he worked on the broken-down trucks his brother bought on the cheap, and together they would cajole these heaps of rusting metal back to life. Each machine was different, requiring a complex and patient kind of surgery. Parts were swapped out, rescued, jerry-rigged. It was as much invention as it was repair. When a truck was reborn, they sold it, and reinvested the profits, which weren’t much at first, but the brothers were very careful with their money, and not ostentatious. Henry recalled a photograph he saw, one of the few that remained from that era, which Rogelio had tacked onto the wall by his bed: in it, Rogelio is lithe, wiry, sitting on a gigantic truck tire with his shirt off. He wears the blank expression of a child who asks no questions and makes no demands of the world. I never saw this photo — it was buried beneath the rubble of the prison — but I can imagine it: not a happy boy, but given his situation, perhaps a wise one.

Eventually Jaime bought his kid brother a motorbike, the kind outfitted with a flatbed of wooden planks in front. This machine became Rogelio’s source of income for the next few years; he drove it across town, from one market to another, carrying cans of paint, lashed-together bundles of metal pipes, chickens headed for slaughter, crammed in pens stacked so high he had to lean to one side in order to steer. San Jacinto was growing steadily, but not yet at the torrid pace that would later come to define it; Rogelio knew every corner of the city then, and years later, in Collectors, he’d drawn a map of it on the walls of the cell he shared with Henry. He used white chalk to trace the streets, the railroad tracks, and even labeled the old apartment he’d shared with his brother.

Henry asked him why he’d gone to the trouble.

“Because one day I’ll go back there,” Rogelio said.

(“See,” Henry added, when he told me this. He had a wry, almost pained smile. “I guess our love story would’ve ended anyway.”)

In 1980, the year Rogelio turned seventeen, his brother took him to a brothel near the center of town. It was the first of its kind, and had been built for the hoped-for wave of young, fearless men with money. There were rumors, even then, of gold in the hills, and the brothel’s fantastical anteroom paid tribute to those still-unconfirmed stories. The walls were painted gold, as was the bar, as were the wooden tables and chairs. In fact, that night even the three prostitutes on display for Rogelio’s choosing had followed the color scheme: one in a gold miniskirt, another in gold lace panties and bra, and a third in a gold negligee. Three little made-up trophies, all smiling coquettishly, hands on their hips. Jaime encouraged Rogelio to choose, but he couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. The moment stretched on and on, far past what was comfortable, until the girls’ put-on smiles began to fade. And still the boy stood there, immobilized, amazed.

“Oh, fuck it,” Jaime said finally. He pulled a wad of bills from his pocket, and paid for all three.

It seems that Jaime had begun to sell more than just refurbished vehicles.

“He told you this?” Nelson asked Henry that night they sat by the school in T—, and the playwright shrugged.

“There was nothing to do inside but talk.”

When Rogelio was eighteen, he traded in his motorized cart for a small loading van, and shortly after, he traded that in for a truck he bought himself, and brought back to life with his own hands. The first time the reconstructed engine turned over was one of the proudest moments of Rogelio’s life. Each new vehicle expanded his world. Now he was a driver; he ferried a dozen laborers down to the lowlands, men who stood for hours without complaint as the truck bounced along the rutted and bumpy roads. Once there, Rogelio discovered a prickly kind of heat he’d never felt before. He began volunteering to drive that route whenever it was available. The following year, his brother sent him in the other direction, over the range to the west; and on that trip, Rogelio first saw the ocean. It was 1982; he was almost twenty years old. He remembered sitting along the edge of the boardwalk in La Julieta, along the bluffs overlooking the sea; not far, incidentally, from the spot where Nelson would let Ixta walk away and out of his life nineteen years later. The fancy people of the city strolled by, confident-looking men in blazers and women in bright dresses, boys he took to be his age, but who appeared to possess a variety of secrets that Rogelio could only guess at. None so much as glanced in his direction. He wondered if he looked out of place, if they could tell he was a stranger here, or if they could even see him at all. But when he considered the ocean, Rogelio realized how insignificant these concerns were. He was happy, he told Henry, and later, in Collectors, he liked to remember the hours he’d spent there, staring at the sea.

For the next few years, he drove the route to the coast, to the lowlands, and back again, carrying vegetables to the city, raw materials to the mountains, laborers to the jungle. He was a quiet young man, still a boy in some ways, but Jaime trusted him. He was dependable. He began to ferry other packages as well, small, tightly bundled bricks, which he kept under the seat or in a compartment hidden above the wheel well. One or two at first, then dozens. These were delivered separately, to other contacts. Rogelio never opened them to see what was inside (though he knew); he never touched the money (though he assumed the quantities in play were not insubstantial). He had no qualms about this work. He trusted his brother. He never considered the consequences, not because he was reckless, but because what he was doing was normal. Everyone was doing it. He was only dimly aware that it was not allowed.

Nelson found this hard to believe, as did I. In fact, Henry had too: How could Rogelio not have known?

Well, he knew; but he didn’t know.

On the last of these trips, Rogelio’s truck was searched at a checkpoint along the Central Highway, sixty-five kilometers east of the capital. The war was on, and the soldiers were searching for weapons and explosives, randomly stopping trucks from the mountains to have a look. Rogelio was very unlucky. Perhaps if he’d been more astute, he could have arranged to pay off the police, but he didn’t. Instead he waited by the side of the road while the men in uniform went through his vehicle with great care. Young Rogelio had time to consider what was happening, how his life was changing course before his very eyes. Not everyone has this privilege; most of us lose sight of the moment when our destiny shifts. He told Henry he felt a strange sort of calm. He might have run into the hills, but the soldiers would’ve shot him without thinking twice. So instead he admired his truck, which he’d had painted by hand, emerald and blue, with the phrase “My Beautiful T—” splashed across the top of the front windshield, in cursive lettering. At least that’s what they told him it said. He recalled thinking, What will happen to this truck? Will it be waiting for me when I get out? In any case, he had time enough to decide to keep his mouth shut. He’d never spent more than a few days at a time in the city, and besides the ocean, he had no real affection for the place. Now he’d be staying. The soldiers found the package, just as he’d expected they would, and to protect his brother, Rogelio said nothing about its origins. He played dumb, which wasn’t difficult. Everyone — from the soldiers who did the search to the policemen who came to arrest him, to his ferocious interrogators, to the lawyers charged with defending him — saw Rogelio as he assumed they would: a clueless, ignorant young man from the provinces. All these years, and nothing had changed: he was invisible, just as he’d always been.

It was true that Rogelio couldn’t read or write, but that said more about his schooling than it did about him. His attorney assured him that his ignorance would work to his benefit at trial. “And don’t go learning,” he told Rogelio, without clarifying if this cynical piece of advice was meant seriously or as a joke. In any case, it didn’t matter, since Rogelio would die before having an audience with a judge.

When Henry arrived in Collectors, Rogelio had been waiting more than eighteen months for the hearing in his case. Waiting, that is, for an opportunity to affirm that he was a victim, that he knew nothing about the laws of the country, that he’d never been educated, and could not, therefore, be held accountable. He’d laugh as he said these things to his new cell mate. They were neither exactly true nor exactly false, but when he rehearsed his testimony aloud in their cell, Henry was more than convinced. He was seduced.

That would come later, and almost by accident; at first, they were friends. But even before that, they were strangers. Henry’s family had tried to arrange a private cell, but none were available. He knew he should be grateful for what he had — many others were in far worse condition — but under the circumstances, he found it difficult to muster much gratitude. For the first few days, he hardly stirred. He didn’t register Rogelio’s face or his smile, and he knew nothing of his new home, beyond what he’d managed to glean on that initial terrifying walk. Henry was given the top bunk, and for three days he slept long hours, or pretended to sleep, facing the wall. Thinking. Remembering. Trying to disappear. He didn’t eat, but he felt no hunger. The night of his arrest had been cataloged, divided into an infinite series of microevents: he remembered each flubbed line of the performance, the expressions on the faces of the audience members who’d expected and hoped for better, every heated word that had been exchanged immediately after the show between him, Diana, and Patalarga. Could any of those details shift slightly, just enough to alter the outcome? Was there a light revision one could make to that evening’s script so that it would not end with him — he was Henry Nuñez, for God’s sake! — here, in Collectors?

Those three days, Rogelio, with whom he’d hardly spoken, came and went, seemingly uninterested and unconcerned by Henry’s well-being. But by the fourth day, Rogelio had had enough. He tapped Henry on the back.

“You’re allowed to get up, you know.”

These were his first words, and Henry could hear the smile with which his cell mate had said them. As a director, he’d often found himself exasperated with the performance of an anemic actor who refused to bring his character to life. He’d say, “I want you to recite this line with a fucking smile! I want to be able to close my eyes and hear you smiling!”

Now Henry turned.

“You’re alive,” Rogelio said.

“I guess.”

“You can get up. You can walk around. You can talk to people. This isn’t solitary confinement. People live here, you know. If you’re going to stay, you’re going to have to realize that.”

That afternoon Henry took his first real walk through the block. He met a few people who would later become friends, or something like friends; and he saw much to remind him of the danger he was in. There were men covered in scars and blurry tattoos, men whose faces seemed congenitally unable to smile, men who locked eyes with him, and spat on the ground. When he shuddered, they laughed.

Rogelio wasn’t talkative, but he was helpful, and explained many things that day. According to him, Henry was lucky — it was clear he wouldn’t have to work (“You’re rich, aren’t you?” Rogelio asked), but almost everyone else inside did. Rogelio did plumbing, repaired broken plastic chairs (he shared a workshop on the roof with a few other men), and made pipes out of bent metal scraps, which he sold to the junkies. The junkies were everywhere, a miserable lineup of half-dead who roamed the prison, offering sex or blood or labor for their fix. Rogelio wasn’t proud of this work, but without it, he wouldn’t survive. His brother sent money only occasionally, enough to cover the cost of the cell and little else. Otherwise he was on his own. His mother hadn’t even come to visit, he said, and though his voice was firm as he spoke, Henry could tell this weighed on him.

Neither Henry nor Rogelio owned the cell where they slept. It belonged to the boss, Espejo, who made extra money on visiting days by renting it out so that men could be alone with their wives. Those days will be difficult, Rogelio warned. They’d have to be out of doors all day, and in the evening, the room smells different, and feels different. You know someone has made love there, and the loneliness is infinite.

Henry nodded, though he couldn’t understand; would not understand, in fact, until he had to live through it himself. There was a lot to learn. There were inmates to steer clear of, and others whom it was dangerous to ignore. There were moments of the day when it was safe to be out; others when it was best to stay inside. The distinction didn’t depend on the time, but on the mood, which Henry would have to learn to read, if he hoped to survive.

“How do you read it?” Henry asked.

Rogelio had a difficult time explaining. It involved listening for the collective murmur of the yard, watching the way certain key men — the barometers of violence in Block Seven — carried themselves on any given day. Small things: Did they have their arms at their sides or crossed in front of them? How widely did their mouths open when they talked? Could you see their teeth? Were their eyes moving quickly, side to side? Or slowly, as if taking in every last detail?

To Henry, it sounded impossible.

Rogelio shrugged. “Remember that most of us here are scared just like you. When I first came, I didn’t have a cell. If there was trouble, I had nowhere to go.”

They were sitting in a corner of the yard, beneath a dull gray winter sky. The light was thin, and there were no shadows. Henry had been inside a month now, and still didn’t understand quite how it had happened. Nowhere to go — he understood these words in a way he never could’ve before. He wrote letters to his sister every day, but they were cheerful, utterly false dispatches that didn’t account for the gloom he felt, or the fear. His letters were performances, stylized and essentially false outtakes of prison life. Inside he was despairing: This is what it means to be trapped. To be frightened, and to be unable to share that fear with a single soul.

“You’ll get it,” said Rogelio. “It just takes time.”

The frenetic daily exchange of goods and services went on about them. Two men waited to have their hair cut, sharing the same day-old newspaper to pass the time. A pair of pants, a couple of sweaters, and T-shirts stolen from some other section of the prison were on sale, the items hanging on a line strung between the posts of one of the soccer goals. Three junkies slept sitting up, with their backs against the wall, shirtless in the cold. Henry saw these men, and felt even colder.

“Where did you sleep back then?” he asked. “Before you had a cell.”

“Beneath the stairs,” Rogelio said, laughing at the memory. “But look at me now!”

Henry did look.

His new friend had a bright smile, and very large brown eyes. His skin was the color of coffee with milk, and he was muscular without being imposing. His clothes were mostly prison scavenged, items left by departing men, appropriated by Espejo or some other strongman, and then sold. Nothing fit him well, but he seemed unbothered by it. He kept his black hair very short, and wore a knit cap most of the time, pulled down low, to stay warm. These dark winter days, he even slept with it on. His nose was narrow, and turned slightly to the left; and he had a habit of talking low, with a hand over his mouth, as if sharing secrets, no matter how mundane an observation he might be making. His eyes sparkled when he had something important to say.

As if we were accomplices, Henry thought.

Visiting days weren’t so bad at first. His family and friends took turns coming to see him, the ones who could tolerate the filth, the overcrowding, the looks from the junkies. They left depleted and afraid; and most didn’t come back. Patalarga did. He visited twice during the first month, and twice the next month, one of only a handful of Diciembre sympathizers who risked it. The others sent messages of support, empty-sounding phrases that Patalarga dutifully relayed, but which made Henry feel even more alone. The idea of the prison performance of The Idiot President was likely hatched on one of these visits, though neither could recall exactly when.

Patalarga had no memory of ever meeting Rogelio. His enduring image of these moments in Collectors involves Henry looking down at his feet, nodding, but not listening. “I wanted him to know we were with him, that we hadn’t forgotten him. But I don’t think he understood what was going on. What we were doing for him.” In truth, only one thing stood out. The smell of the place, Patalarga told me; that was what he remembered. “You could close your eyes and not see, cover your ears and not hear; but that smell, it was always there.”

Henry agreed: Collectors was fetid and unsanitary, and when you ceased to recognize the odor, it was because you were losing part of yourself to your environment. “Three weeks inside,” he told me, “and I didn’t even notice it.”

But the hours immediately after the visitors had gone were the most difficult of the week. The prison never felt lonelier. It required a great collective energy to welcome so many outsiders, to put the best face on what was clearly a terrible situation. Collectors was falling apart, anyone could see that. The damp winters had eaten away at the bricks, and the walls were covered with mold. Every day new men were brought in. They were unchained and set free inside, made to fight for a place to sleep in the already overcrowded hell of Collectors. The terrorists just over the high fence from Block Seven sang without pause, and many men complained that their families were afraid to come. Family day, when women were allowed in, came on alternate Wednesdays, and these were brutal. By the end of the afternoon, everyone was worn out from smiling, from reassuring their wives and children and mothers that they were all right. (Fathers, as a rule, did not visit; most of Henry’s fellow inmates did not have fathers.) It wasn’t uncommon for there to be fights on those evenings. So long as no one was killed, it was fine, just something to relieve the tension.

Nine weeks in, and Henry felt almost abandoned. Only Patalarga came. On family day, he was alone, as alone as Rogelio. Espejo rented out their cell, and in the evening, as each man lay on his bunk, Henry could still feel the warmth of those phantom bodies. Their perfumed scent. It was the only time the smell of the prison dissipated, though, in some ways, this other scent was worse. It reminded you of everything you were missing. Henry had been unable to convince any of the women he used to see to come visit him, and he didn’t blame them. He’d had nothing special with any of them, though at times his despair was so great that he could concentrate on any one of their faces and convince himself he’d been in love. As for Rogelio, he was far from home, and hadn’t had a visitor, male or female, in months.

Jaime had come once, and would come once more before Rogelio died.

There wasn’t much to say now, so the two men let themselves dream.

“Did you see her?” asked Henry one evening after the visitors had all gone, and because Rogelio hadn’t, he began to describe the woman who’d made love on the low bunk that very day. She’d come to see an inmate named Jarol, a thief with a sharp sense of humor and arms like tense coils of rope. Henry talked about the woman’s ample curves, how delicious she looked in her dress — not tight, but tight enough. She had long black hair, doe eyes, and fingernails painted pink. She was perfect, he said, because she was: not because of her body or her lips, but because of the way she smiled at her husband, with the hungry look of a woman who wants something and is not ashamed. A man could live on a look like that.

Henry said, “She didn’t care who saw.”

He could hear Rogelio breathing. They were quiet for a moment.

“What would you have done to her?” Rogelio asked. His voice was very low, tentative.

This was how it began, Henry told me: speculating aloud about how he might spend a few minutes alone with a woman in this degrading, stifling space. He had no difficulty imagining the scene, and he could think of no good reason not to share it. How different was it? Just because there was another man in the room with him — why should it be different?

He would have torn off that dress, Henry said, and bent her against the wall, with her palms flat against that stupid map of San Jacinto. He would have pressed his hard cock against her pussy, teased her until she begged him to come in. From the bottom bunk, Rogelio laughed. He would have made her howl, Henry said, made her scream. Cupped her breasts in his hands and squeezed. Is this why you came, woman? Tell me it is! Already Henry was disappearing into his own words. He had his eyes closed. The walls had begun to vibrate.

“What else?” said Rogelio, his voice stronger now. “Go on. What else would you do?”

When they finished, each on his own bunk that first time, both men laughed. They hadn’t touched, or even made eye contact, but somehow what they’d done was more intimate than that. For one moment, the pleasure of each had belonged to the other, and now everything looked different as a result. Something dark and joyless had been banished.

Years later in T—, Henry told the story, and even allowed himself a smile.

15

HENRY, PATALARGA, AND NELSON arrived at the door of Mrs. Anabel’s house the next morning, at precisely nine. They hadn’t slept well, and it showed. Henry’s right eye had swollen nearly shut, his ribs still hurt, and he described his walk along the cobblestone streets of T— as a kind of teetering shuffle. “I was stumbling like an old man,” he said, and admitted that he might have toppled over but for Nelson, who steadied him all the way. The beating felt more severe that morning, and it wasn’t just Henry who noticed it. Nelson and Patalarga felt it too, an achy kind of hangover, as if they’d all been attacked.

Noelia met the three men at the door, and observed them warily. She hadn’t expected them all to come, she said.

“Is there a problem?” Patalarga asked.

She crossed her arms. “I just don’t see why you all need to be here. She’s very old, you know.”

Nelson was the one who answered, steady, firm, and respectful. He held his hands clasped behind his back, and leaned forward slightly, as if sharing a secret.

“Madam, after last night, we really can’t let our friend go in there alone. I do hope you understand.”

She considered them for a moment. Nelson, especially. She liked him, she told me later, from the first. From the moment she’d seen him onstage the night before.

“My mother is waiting,” Noelia said finally, and led them out into the courtyard, where Jaime sat with Mrs. Anabel, talking in whispers. Both looked up when the members of Diciembre stepped out of the dark passage and into the light. Nelson was the first to emerge. The morning sun shone directly into his eyes.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Rogelio!” said Mrs. Anabel. Her face lit up. “We were just talking about you, son. Come, come, boy! Have a seat.”

IF I WERE a different sort of writer, I might have discussed Mrs. Anabel’s dementia with an expert or two, tried to make some medical sense of what was happening to her mind. But I didn’t, in part because I suspect no psychiatrist could convincingly explain the abrupt twists and turns in her cognitive understanding. There was no logic. What I know about her unpredictable reactions I’ve learned from Noelia, who’d lived with her mother and her moods for years, attempting to decipher a pattern. By the time of these events, she’d given up.

Noelia reports that her mother woke that morning refreshed, that she greeted Jaime as if it were no surprise at all to find him there, and asked him about his schoolwork. He told her he was out of school now, had been for many years, and was living in San Jacinto. To which Mrs. Anabel responded, “I was just telling your father I never liked that town.”

She hadn’t been to the provincial capital in nearly twenty years.

Jaime sighed.

“Did you marry yet?”

“Yes, Mama. You’ve met my wife.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Yes, Mama.”

Mrs. Anabel frowned. “I remember her now. The pretty one.”

Noelia watched this exchange as she prepared breakfast. The morning chill hadn’t yet receded, and Jaime and her mother sat with heavy blankets draped over their laps. “I enjoyed that moment, in fact. It was good that Jaime see exactly the state our mother was in. He needed to know.”

After breakfast, they settled in the courtyard. Mrs. Anabel held a cup of tea in her hands, and said she’d dreamed of Rogelio the night before. Jaime and Noelia braced themselves, but to their relief, Mrs. Anabel confessed she couldn’t remember any of the details.

“It was very confusing, like all dreams. Sometimes I’m very confused.”

Still, all things considered, Mrs. Anabel seemed at peace, so much so that Jaime considered calling off Henry’s visit. He probably would have, but then his mother’s mood shifted once more. She had something to say, Mrs. Anabel told her children. It had been nagging her all morning. That man from yesterday might be on to something. She’d been unable to shake the feeling that it might be true: that her younger son might be dead.

Jaime began to argue, but Noelia shushed him.

“It just can’t be,” Mrs. Anabel said. “Have you talked to him? When was that? Are you sure? We’ll have to tell your father, but I’m afraid it will kill him.”

This is the world Nelson walked into.

“I was just a step behind him when the old woman called him Rogelio,” Patalarga told me later. “And I saw him freeze. Just for a moment. We froze too, in the dark still, in the hallway that led into the courtyard. I guess they do these kinds of improvisation exercises all the time at the Conservatory, and maybe that explains why he responded the way he did. I don’t think you could even call it a decision, because it wasn’t. He just reacted. He went with it.”

The sun in Nelson’s eyes was like stage lights, I imagine.

“Yes, Mama,” he said. “I’m here.”

And then something else happened, which tilted the scene once more. At the sound of Nelson’s voice, Mrs. Anabel’s certainty began to fade, as if she were suddenly frightened by what she had conjured. Henry and Patalarga had stepped into the daylight, and perhaps this too gave her doubts. She squinted at this young man before her, the one she’d just called Rogelio, and couldn’t recognize him. “Is that you?” she said, and no one uttered another word until Nelson spoke again.

“Mama, it’s me,” he said — he purred — repeating the words once and again, such that their sound and meaning began to soothe Mrs. Anabel. Mama, it’s me. Nelson stood in the courtyard, chest out, face full of love.

Jaime, Noelia told me later, wore a look of utter bewilderment.

“I’d never seen anything like it,” Patalarga said, with pride evident in his voice.

I can picture it: down to the unsteady posture of Mrs. Anabel, suddenly frightened, suddenly curious. Heartbroken, but in some very deep place inside her, lonely enough to want to believe. It’s the drama of any family separated by space and time. I can see the way she stood with the help of her son, Jaime; the way she shuffled her feet toward Nelson, then paused, then shuffled some more. Mama, it’s me. According to Noelia, “It was like trying to coax a kitten from under the bed. He was very patient.” When Mrs. Anabel finally approached, Nelson held her very tightly against his chest. She was so very small, it was like holding a child.

They must have stood there for three or four minutes, while the rest of them watched, awed by this scene they could hardly explain. “No one spoke,” Henry told me. “We couldn’t. Something special was happening, and we all knew that, even Jaime.”

When the old woman had gathered herself, the questioning began. These questions were random, and for the moment, contained no skepticism at all. The skepticism would return later, flaring up unexpectedly, once or twice a day — but not just yet. It was as if a circuit had been suddenly connected.

Did you go to school today, boy?

Is your brother treating you nicely?

Will you be going out to the fields with your father this afternoon?

Are there big buildings where you live?

How old are you now?

Fortunately, there was no wrong answer to this final query, since Mrs. Anabel drew from all the periods of her life in conversation with her son, the stranger. He was a boy, an adolescent, a young man — all at once. Through it all, Nelson remained composed, good-humored, and generous. According to Noelia, “He performed marvelously. You almost wanted to applaud.”

Mama, it’s me.

Of course, one applauds at the end of a performance, not at the beginning.

EVENTUALLY IT WAS TIME for Mrs. Anabel’s nap. It had been a satisfying performance; everyone could agree on that, and Mrs. Anabel’s joy at being reunited with Rogelio was undeniable. She’d given out a round of hugs before heading to bed, even to Henry, whose earlier visit she seemed to have either forgotten or forgiven altogether. Before Noelia took her to her bedroom, the elderly woman made Rogelio promise that he’d stay for dinner, and Nelson answered with a bright, noncommittal smile. Mrs. Anabel squeezed his hand, and said Noelia was preparing something special. “Your favorite.”

A few minutes later, Noelia returned from her mother’s room to announce that the old woman was asleep. Henry, Patalarga, and Nelson stood to go. The daily bus back to San Jacinto left at two, and they were still in time to make it. The previous night’s tension seemed to have dissipated, and if the mood was not exactly friendly, there was something new: a sense of shared accomplishment. Even Jaime seemed pleased. They’d managed it, the five of them together, and now a previously troubled elderly woman was sleeping peacefully.

“I’m glad we could help,” Henry said. He turned to Nelson. “You were wonderful.”

“Thank you,” Nelson said.

Noelia nodded her agreement. “I almost wish you could stay!”

Everyone laughed but Jaime, who raised a hand, teasing the air rather vaguely. He had a pensive look. “Would you?”

Nelson grinned. Patalarga too.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Jaime said.

Henry objected: “It’s a terrible idea.”

“I’m not talking to you,” Jaime said. Then to Nelson: “Is it something you’d consider?”

“Jaime.”

He frowned. “Sister, let the boy talk.”

Nelson cast anxious glances at Henry and Patalarga. “No. I wouldn’t consider it.”

“That’s a shame. My mother likes you. You could do an old woman a lot of good.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“I think you can.” He paused. “And I think you could, if you wanted. I can pay you. I can make it worth your while. Why don’t you give her a week. Think of it as a performance. You’ll do quite nicely. What’s the problem?”

Henry saw in Jaime’s smile the seriousness of the proposal. This wasn’t a suggestion at all, but a command.

“You’re serious?” Nelson asked.

“He is,” Henry mumbled.

“You can’t be.”

“I am,” Jaime said.

Noelia couldn’t believe her offhand comment had led to this. Her brother’s idea was appalling — but it was also marvelous. To have company. To have a guest. Jaime visited only rarely, and never brought his wife or his children. The idea of being accompanied, she admitted to me later, sounded intoxicating. She couldn’t hide her enthusiasm, nor did she try.

“We’ll set you up in his old room,” she said to Nelson. “I’ll clear it out, and you’ll be very comfortable there.”

“I didn’t say I was staying.”

Henry rubbed his eyes. “You’re staying,” he said, defeated. He’d intended to communicate the futility of arguing, but it sounded instead as if he were turning on his friend.

“Henry!” Patalarga said.

Henry turned to Jaime. “We’ll wait for him. Stay in town, but out of sight. She won’t even know we’re here.”

Jaime shook his head. “I don’t want you in my town. I want you as far away from my mother as can be.”

“We’re not leaving our friend here,” Patalarga said.

“Your friend will be fine. You’ll take good care of him, won’t you, Noelia?”

She smiled innocently. “Of course.”

Jaime clapped his hands together. “See?”

“I’m not staying here. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You are,” Jaime said. “Let’s not argue about this. I don’t enjoy arguing.”

It was an awful feeling, Patalarga told me later: “I looked at Nelson and then back at this violent man, and knew there was nothing we could do. Henry looked as if he might cry. It didn’t sink in right away, but then we knew. It was Nelson who put an end to it.”

He held up his hands in surrender, the way you might if you were being robbed at knifepoint.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

THAT AFTERNOON, the three friends walked to the plaza, and said their good-byes in the shadow of the bus to San Jacinto. Jaime had come to watch, to verify that it all went according to plan, but he kept his distance, out of respect for the moment. Henry, Patalarga, and Nelson embraced, and Nelson asked his friends not to speak with his mother. “Better she doesn’t worry,” Nelson said, and they all agreed this was for the best. “I’ll be home soon.”

Henry and Patalarga nodded.

Then they boarded, and the bus pulled out, and just like that, Nelson was alone in T—. Now the tour has really surprised me, he wrote in his journal that night. It’s become my very own one-man show.

As for Henry and Patalarga, they rode out of T— in silence. The views along the route were spectacular: sheer mountain faces, the sky almost unnervingly blue. There were wildflowers growing at the roadside, pushing out from the dry rock in exquisite and surprising shades. Halfway to San Jacinto there was a river to cross, and when they turned the last switchback before the bridge, they came to a stopped line of trucks. Their engines were off, and many of the drivers were out of their vehicles, standing along the edge of the road in groups of three or four, caps pulled low over their eyes, smoking.

They could go no farther. The bus stopped too, and all the passengers got out.

It seemed a small van had collided with a truck full of mangoes just sixty meters beyond the bridge. “If you walk up to the edge, you can see it,” one of the men said with a shrug, and Henry and Patalarga, along with a few others, moved in that direction.

The scene was grisly. The remains of the van were strewn down the side of the gulch, metal twisted and bent like a crushed toy. Pieces of the windshield glinted in the sun, and one of the tires had come to rest at the water’s edge. It was impossible, at that distance, to make out any human remains, but the rumor circulating among those gathered at the lip of the drop-off was that there were no survivors. Some of the kids were crying; their mothers tried to comfort them. “Don’t look,” Henry heard a woman say to her boy, as the child peeked anxiously through his fingers. The only witness to the crash was the driver of the mango truck, who was still in shock. Someone said a medical team from San Jacinto was on its way.

Henry walked back toward the bus. Accidents like this happen all the time, but somehow in all his travels he’d been spared seeing one up close. He felt sore all over, in his jaw, in his back, in his hips. It wasn’t overwhelming pain, just enough to make him feel old.

A few moments later, Patalarga returned. “Three hours, at least,” he said. “Get comfortable.” They stood by the roadside, looking out over the valley. “Are you all right?”

Henry answered with a nod.

“Our friendship began to unravel then,” Patalarga told me later, “just when it should have been strengthened. I tried to talk to him, but he was hard to reach. I thanked him for last night, for telling us everything. I got no response. I told him not to worry about Nelson, that he’d be fine, and he just shrugged.”

Henry doesn’t exactly dispute this. “The wreck put me in a mood. The wreck and everything else. I couldn’t help it, but I felt like he was judging me.”

“But Patalarga was your best friend,” I said.

“That’s true,” Henry told me, “and it also isn’t true. You get to an age when that phrase isn’t quite what it used to be. There is no best friend role waiting to be filled. You’re alone. You have a life behind you, a series of disappointments, and perhaps a few things scattered ahead that might give you pleasure. I wasn’t happy. What else can I tell you? I felt like a failure. I lost everything in Collectors. And in T—, I’d felt for a moment like I might be able to get it back. I wasn’t worried for Nelson, but there was no escaping the reality of it: we were going home without him.”

This was our third interview. He was thin and unshaven, with a grayish pallor, and had deteriorated even in these few short weeks since we’d first spoken. He’d just told me a version of what he told Nelson and Patalarga the night before their departure — the story of Rogelio. It was summer on the coast, and the windows of his half-furnished apartment had been thrown open, the curtains pulled. The room was filled with light, but Henry slumped in his chair as if he’d just woken from a nervous sleep. A fan whirred in the corner. I had the sense we were acting out the very scene he was describing: metaphorically, there we were, he and I, standing by the side of the road high in the mountains, observing the wreckage. Only in this case the wreckage was him.

It was almost dusk when the traffic on the road to San Jacinto finally began to move again. All the cars and trucks and buses and vans followed in a long, slow procession, rolling along as a block, never more than a few car lengths between them, as if by riding together, they could steel themselves against the impact of the accident they’d just seen. They arrived in San Jacinto that evening, in time to catch a night bus to the coast. Everyone was tired; nerves were raw. Henry and Patalarga bought their tickets, and waited.

Even at that late hour, the station was manic. There were children everywhere, Patalarga remembers, not children who were traveling, but children working the station: selling cigarettes or shoe shines or simply begging. Below the constant noise, if you concentrated, you could hear the dull buzz of the fluorescent lights. Everyone looked like wax dummies. I can’t wait to leave this place, Henry thought. We can’t possibly leave soon enough.

At nearly one in the morning, the bus was ready to board. Before it pulled out, the passengers were videotaped, this time by a girl of fifteen wearing a tank top and a pair of unnaturally tight jeans. She had black hair, a moon face, and was shy. Perhaps half the people on board had heard the news of the deadly crash at the bridge, and as a result the taping was more somber than usual. No one waved, no one smiled; they peered into the camera’s glass eye without blinking, as if searching for a loved one on the other side.

Henry didn’t even face the girl, but turned instead toward the window.

“Hey,” she said, “over here,” but the playwright didn’t respond.

Patalarga shrugged an apology on behalf of his friend. “I’d never seen Henry like that,” he told me later.

After a few seconds the girl moved on, muttering complaints under her breath.

They hadn’t been on the road long before Henry turned to Patalarga. He wore an expression of worry, or even heartbreak.

“I guess that’s it,” Henry said to his friend, his voice low.

Patalarga had been on the verge of sleep. “Yeah?”

“The tour’s over.”

The two friends didn’t speak again until morning.